[plt-scheme] headless mred on OS X? Or, way to decode (lib"read.ss""wxme") reader in mz?

From: John Clements (clements at brinckerhoff.org)
Date: Wed Sep 26 15:56:56 EDT 2007

I'm trying to set up a "checker.ss" module to verify that student  
handins (using the handin-server) are syntactically well-formed.   
However, I'm running the handin-server on an OS X machine.  This  
causes the following problem chain:

1) In order to analyze the input, I need to read it from the handin  
file.
2) this file is stored in #reader (lib "read.ss" "wxme") format.
3) I don't believe I can read such a file in mzscheme.  I got as far  
as requiring (lib "read.ss" "wxme") and calling its read procedure on  
an input port with the submission chars after the reader spec, but I  
then got an error

 > (read (open-input-file "foo.scm"))
foo.scm::1324: read: illegal use of "."

=== context ===
/Users/clements/plt/collects/wxme/wxme.ss:683:31: loop
/Users/clements/plt/collects/wxme/wxme.ss:662:2: do-read

... that doesn't seem to correspond to character 1324 in the file  
(can't find a promising-looking '.' there), and I surmise that since  
the input file is rife with references to snip%'s and box%'s, I can't  
(read) this file in mzscheme anyway.  (I would be delighted to be  
wrong here, of course.)

4) I can't run mred as a cron job, or (more specifically) any time  
that I'm not logged in.  Trying this produces the error
INIT_Processeses(), could not establish the default connection to the  
WindowServer.


So, the possible solutions that I see are:

1) never log out, allowing a mred process to run all the time,
2) forget about running a checker, or
3) run the X windows version of mred; I haven't really messed with  
this, perhaps it's the best route?


Any advice appreciated,

John Clements

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